The Thing About Harry

I love a good romcom. Finding a GREAT romcom has been near impossible since the early 2000s and basically doesn’t even exist in the gay canon, with the exception a very few, and more often they’re not good. Trick was a great one and I grew up on that as well as a heavy dose in the 90s of Sleepless in Seattle (very good), While You Were Sleeping (great) and My Best Friend’s Wedding (just as great). So when The ThingAbout Harry came around and my husband said he wanted to watch it, I rolled my eyes and thought this was going to be a rough 90 minutes. I’ve seen people say it’s too by-the-numbers or lacking clear motivations for its characters, and I want to address those. We get close to zero movies like this for the gay world, and sometimes, you just WANT a by the numbers romcom to fold into with a pumpkin spice latte and your beagle. You want pretty boys to swoon at each other and happenstance to play a major character. You want charming, witty banter with only the lightest touch of danger around the corner. Just because something is by the numbers does not make it bad. In fact, in something like this, it makes it great, because it nails ever moment there is. I can’t tell you how many times I teared up in this movie, but it’s above 4. And lacking clear motivations? It’s a ROMCOM! The motivations are love. The motivations are being around the person that you just gel with no matter the differences or the complications. Anyway, I digress. This has recently climbed the ladder to join my favorite romcoms. In the past week, I’ve seen it 5 times and it just never gets old. It’s funny, it’s sweet… it’s a warm blanket. There’s a nice gentle score, some inspired song choices, classic romcom cinematography, excellent lead men (and a great supporting woman), lively direction and I really can’t ask for more. It’s currently airing on Hulu (I bought it back when it came out), so if you’re looking to just curl up into a great romcom, put this one on, get a glass of red, a dog of your choice and fall in love.

O melhor filme do gênero que já assisti, o filme trás uma história simples porém que cativa e te faz torcer pelo casal, atuações impecáveis.

A unique and different romance story for LGBTQ+ people makes the viewer feel every sensation of being funny, romantic, and happy at the same time.

Here's the thing. This is a silly made-for-tv rom-com. If you don't like the genre, this movie might not do it for you. It has implausible and contrived plot twists, and the character's motivations are hard to fathom beyond being necessary to move the plot along. But if you do like rom-coms and you have been waiting your whole life for a male-male one on television, you will be delighted. Sam and Harry are so obviously in love from their re-meetcute that you have to root for them even as you watch them make one silly decision after the other that keeps them apart. The characters are broad, the situations are contrived, the set pieces are predictable, but you won't care. I cried, laughed, and cheered for them. Also, this movie owes a lot to that really famous movie rom-com with "Harry" in the title. It's not the masterpiece that film is, and sometime it suffers from comparison. But let's be generous and think of it as an homage.

Um filme que apesar de se aproximar de um clichê hétero, ainda trás algo diferente do que normalmente retratam em filmes LGBTQs.

I really wanted to love this movie. As a gay man I cling to any quality lgbtq films especially when they are mainstream. I was blessed with Love, Simon and since that was a minor hit I was expecting a lot more movies to come out. So this option from freeform is appreciated and it's cute but it's very by the numbers and the leads don't have the best chemistry. That being said it's about a guy named Sam who runs into Harry sporadically over the years. They have a little bit of a love connection and eventually, well you know. It's all fairly formulaic but I hope it's successful and opens the door to better films. 3/5